PrioVR on kick starter

Looks very interesting, this might be one to keep an eye on.

Very interesting but considering that they are targeting consumers it seems a bit pricey at $450 early bird for the lite version that lacks a sensor on the hand which would seem to be one of the more important ones.

I am definitely going to wait and see what sixsense has to offer on their kick starter. It is hopefully cheaper and with the hip tracking/feet tracking of say the Cyberith virtualizer and possibly Omni odt the extra sensors probably won't be critical unless you need to do kicks etc.

Regardless its exciting to see all these new vr accessories popping up.

Extremely impressive. Extremely expensive.

Even if they can bring the price down to a reasonable level, I'm not sure that I want to get into a wired VR jumpsuit or spend 20 minutes lacing up a dozen sensors just to play Skyrim for 30.

That doesn't mean that I don't want a set. :D

It seems like it can work, but I don't really see how it's any better than a Kinect or Leap Motion systems. It's still limited by the space you have to work in. I personally think using the Oculus Rift with motion controls is too much of a safety hazard to be acceptable on a regular basis and that it would be best to keep full motion controls for use in augmented reality systems. Alas, two of the games in the project I'm working on support Kinect and Leap style motion controls, so perhaps adding this to the list of potential control platforms should be brought up if it reaches it's funding goal. The more the merrier, right?

Still, it would appear that nothing is beating the joy/thumb stick as the best method of navigating with 3 or more degrees of freedom this year. At the very least limitations like these are beneficial as the two projects we're dealing with were designed with a lack of significant mobility in mind, which resulted in innovation being sought in other vectors.

What specs are you interested in knowing about our IMU Mocap suit?

To clarify our statement on our sensors "exhibit no orientation drift over time", we are using both an accelerometer and magnetometer to drift-correct the gyroscope. This is done for each update on the sensors, so for however long the sensors are running they will always report accurate orientation. Much of our IP is centered around magnetometer error correction and compensation, and as long as the sensors are re-zeroed at the beginning of use, magnetic interference is generally not a concern. Additionally, we have implemented self-calibration and filters that employ dynamic confidence values, which combine to produce an orientation estimate that is generally very good even in changing environments. Of course, there are limits to this, but in all but extreme circumstances, the sensors will perform well.

Also to clarify our statement on "drift-free position within the virtual world", we are saying that our pedestrian tracking used for our mocap demos and Mocap Studio acts in the same way as if you planted your foot on the ground in the real world and it does not move because of friction so is the behavior for the virtual foot in the virtual world, which is what matters for a natural virtual-world experience. :D

Thanks for the reply Chris!

As for validation, it would be great to see standard joint angles or quaternions when compared to an optical tracking system. So, maximum joint angle error, RMS, confidence interval and standard deviation. Maybe a plot of both measurements over time for a typical movement. Here is a good example of an IMU MoCap system and its validation:
http://www8.informatik.umu.se/digitalAssets/2/2215_a35-vlasic.pdf

As for the magnetic field indoors, I have made very different experience. Maybe my living and lab environments are especially prone to disturbances. But then, a warehouse like you show in the kickstarter video isn't a very harsh or typical environment either. Are you guys sure that your system will work well at peoples home? What if I just sit in my chair and play a cockpit simulation then get up and sit down on the couch next to the fridge to continue playing?

Have you guys reached out to the oculus team? Because, afaik, their current magnetic drift correction relies on the player not changing their head location by more than a tilt.

Sorry if it is already mentioned somewhere in this thread, but i just noticed that they lowered the price for the kickstarter units. The lite is now $349 and the pro $399 making it much more interesting IMO. It will be interesting what the sixsense STEMS end up costing.

My primary concern is compatibility though. Without a generic middleware layer providing the skeletal tracking for games, i am afraid that PrioVr will have limited support ( i would assume the STEM's are somewhat backwards compatible with the Hydra's at least). Adding something like the Omni/Wiivok/Cyberith Virtualizer to the mix only makes it more complicated even though it has the potential for providing exceptional immersion. I might have to increase my gadget budget allowance :)

I will only be impressed with this product once I can moonwalk with it.

VapoR,

We do validate the sensors themselves using a variety of procedures and test fixtures such as a multi-axis gimbal, a rotary step positioning table, and a rate table. Since the orientations of the bones measured during a mocap session are taken directly from those same sensors, it follows that the performance shouldn't be significantly different for mocap use as compared to other uses.

We do have access to an optical mocap system and have planned such validation studies, but development has taken priority for the time being. We have used our systems in a variety of locations, including home living rooms and conference centers with 40 floor steel-framed hotels above and we generally don't see much in the way of magnetic disturbances that are completely debilitating. Our warehouse set-up should have higher levels of magnetic distortion since both the floor and ceiling are steel-mesh over steel bar-joist, on-top of massive steel I-beams, all of which should contribute to hard-iron effects.

Clearly since the system does rely upon a magnetometer, it is possible to wash-out the earth's magnetic field or distort it so severely that it is unusable. Large ferrous structures do distort the Earth's magnetic field, but do so in a gradual low-gradient way. Our sensors can detect these dynamic perturbation events and lock-them out in the short term. In the long-term, however, (such as moving next to the fridge and staying there) the field distortion would become noticeable. But if the system is re-zeroed near the fridge and the system were to stay there, the it should work in that area until the player moves into an area with different distortion properties.

Some of our team members have talked to Oculus team members, but I'm not aware of any current efforts to collaborate on tracking.

Hi Chris, Im going to back your system as soon as I get around to signing up for kickstarter.

Is there any way you guys could put out some more demo videos? My biggest concern is the current video the avatar looks a bit jittery I'm guessing that's because of the skeletal approximation? What kind of precision can we expect out of this system?

If possible could you do a video demonstrating precision, also would be helpful to see something with input nodes in use.

Thanks.